Blood Like Roses
by Dust1
Summary: This is Switch, as I see her... Maybe she's more than meets the eye. Next Chapter up.
1. Red is the Sky

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Blood like Roses  
  
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Disclaimer: I don't own the characters you recognize. I don't own the setting. The Matrix is the property of WB and the Wachowski brothers (how did I learn to spell that?). I'm not making any money off of this. Please don't sue me, I'm still in high school.  
  
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PART ONE: ENTER THE CHARACTERS  
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She doesn't remember very much of it. Maybe she doesn't want to, or maybe it's just too difficult to think about it all. When you're born sensitive, and life forces you to be tough, you tend to lose touch. The things that are easy to remember are sensory; material.  
  
Switch could remember in those first days after being pulled out of one hellhole into another what it was like to be different every time she woke up. She could remember not sleeping for weeks, afraid she would change again. She could remember the metal. The metal that reflected light against itself. Hard, unforgiving. Sharp edges, rough cloth. She still hates the metal.  
  
What stood out prominently was the way Cypher looked at Trinity. Switch asked him about it once.  
  
He shrugged half-heartedly. "So I have a thing for her. Can ya blame me? She's sexy."  
  
Switch moved away. "I wouldn't know." Maybe she'd said it too sharply. Maybe he'd catch on.  
  
Because the truth was she really did know.  
  
And that scared her.  
  
It was months before she came to terms with it.  
  
Mouse, the small one, was always showing her pictures he drew. He shaded their curvaceousness it an almost 3-dimensional reality. He showed her the woman in the red dress on the display screen once.  
  
He looked at the woman proudly. "She's part of my new program. She's meant to stand out."  
  
Switch took the woman in.  
  
"Do you think she draws the eye?"  
  
Switch let irony creep into her eyes, as if she was jeering Mouse for being at the age where hormones fogged his mind. "Yes. Very- red."  
  
Mouse laughed. "What do you /really/ think?"  
  
She looked at him. She almost told him then... "I want to-" //kiss her on the mouth//. But she didn't say that. "I want to see more of your ideas."  
  
That was before Aysha came to their ship.  
  
She was from another ship, but they'd kicked her out.  
  
Aysha was thin, wiry, young. More beautiful than the woman in red.  
  
At first Switch was to occupied by her pain to see it.  
  
It, the pain, was like a dying bird, caged between her ribs. If she had had a close friend, she would have told them that's where her soul was. "It's right here." She would have said, pointing at the place just below where the last of her floating ribs met. "I know because when ever I'm awake I feel like clawing my way in there and dragging it out."  
  
And so it went. Slow, blurry pain.  
  
She worked. Cleaning things mostly, when she didn't have other chores. Scrubbing the unforgiving metal until its surface was mirror like, smooth and cruel.  
  
But at night, when there was nothing to do... At night when it was cold and she would sit awake it her room... she learned to cut.  
  
She had taken a knife from the first aid kit. It was normally used for cutting gauze to wrap around wounds (why didn't they use the scissors that were also in the kit?).  
  
And deep within the hopelessness of sleepless nights she would drag the knife through her soft, ghostly skin. The blood would bead up on her skin, red as the roses she had loved in the other hellhole.  
  
Sometimes she kissed the fresh gashes, and tasted the blood, in all its complexities. It made her forget the world she was in.  
  
But she never tried to end it for good.  
  
Something inside her still clung on.  
  
Maybe it was because by the time she found the knife, she'd noticed Aysha.  
  
The name Aysha meant life, but according to her she couldn't give it. She said she'd tried. Slept with everyone on her past ship, she said, broke the captain's heart- got kicked off.  
  
But she was a damn good programmer. And her and Mouse got along- well.  
  
And when Switch finally noticed Aysha, she knew she could take a bullet for her beauty. 


	2. Blue is the Love

NOTES: I would like to stress that this chapter is UN-FINISHED. I am going to Cozumel, Mexico at three fifteen tomorrow morning, and will not return for two weeks, so I thought I post this. I have been taking my time on this story, because I don't want it to go down hill the way my last one did. Unfortunately, I can't top the first chapter, so I've here's what my measly 14 year old talent can give you. Enjoy.  
  
  
  
There would be times when 'the men' would all go off during meal times, and She, Trinity and Aysha together would be left alone, as if they thought women preferred the company of women. Switch flinched. She hoped they meant in a non-sexual sense.  
  
"Are you okay Switch?" Asked Aysha, leaning towards Switch, putting her hand out…  
  
"Yes." Switch snapped, moving away too hastily.  
  
Aysha looked hurt, but got over it. "Tank's cute, don't you think?" She asked, getting no answer.  
  
Switch shuddered inwardly. But she reminded herself that her quiet reputation protected her.  
  
"But…" continued Aysha. "I think he… I mean, he and Morpheus…" She laughed nervously and didn't finish. "Yeah, unreachable. Mouse is too young… Maybe I'll just wait for The One to be unplugged, and snag him."  
  
She wrinkled her nose cutely and smiled like the world was her oyster.  
  
Trinity looked at Aysha scathingly with her forget-me-not eyes. "You don't know that we are going to find the One."  
  
Aysha shrugged from across the table. "I believe in Morpheus' instincts."  
  
Switch left, feeling the swell of despair inside her when she had nothing to do.  
  
But the tiredness soon started to seep in through the scars in Switches soul, and she couldn't work anymore. She started to sleep again, curled up against the hard mattress, curled around her soul. Trying to protect it.  
  
She was tired of the façade. The façade she was able to abandon within the realms of her subconscious, which reigned eternally within her dreams.  
  
But she couldn't drop it fully.  
  
Give a bit away, you give it all away. Needless to say, they noticed.  
  
Well, Trinity noticed. The others seemed to believe the lies that Switch concocted.  
  
She and Dozer would be working away at fixing machinery or she, Aysha and Mouse would be programming software to take into the Matrix, and he would ask her; "Are you okay? You aren't working as hard as usual." Or "What's been up lately? You've been seeming tired."  
  
And she would twist two wires together casually, or type in a variant code, and shrug confidently. "I was just proving my worth before."  
  
Trinity could recognise pain and concealment. Maybe it was experience, or maybe intuition. Or maybe she'd heard Switch's crying through the metal walls more than once. She tried to reach out to her one night, tried to put her arms around her, in comfort. Affection was hard for Trinity, but pain was irresistible. Pain that tore herself away from the embrace of another woman, sick with fear, crying tears that may as well be the blood she would seek from herself later. But blood was red, and tears were salty, and Trinity was discouraged.  
  
But something inside her was still entranced by Switch.  
  
And Switch couldn't take her eyes off of Aysha. 


End file.
